In defence of wedding gift lists

Had Tanya Gold, writing in G2 last week, realised the reaction her rant against wedding lists would provoke, perhaps she would have expressed herself less vehemently. She has been publicly disinvited from her chum's wedding, and is the subject of around 300 heated readers' responses online, many of whom feel she should remember that guests like buying the happy couple a useful gift from a list and she'd better buy in or, well, shut up.

She seems to have overlooked the rather frightening alternative to a wedding list: letting people choose what gifts to give you. It's all very well if your guests are likely to know that you'd just adore an Emma Bridgewater teapot, a voucher for dinner at Rick Stein's or a first edition of Far from the Madding Crowd. But most weddings have their fair proportion - forgive me if I sound snobbish - of ageing relatives, badly dressed uncles and parents' friends who have such poor taste you wouldn't trust them to buy you a skinny latte, let alone something you are supposed to treasure for ever.

The silk-lined box of gold-plated fruit knives with flowery, enamelled handles languishing in the bottom of my wardrobe is testament to the necessity of a wedding list. And the humiliation of taking a dozen nasty cut-glass whisky tumblers to Selfridges to exchange them only to be told: "I'm sorry, madam, but this design was discontinued eight years ago," cannot be underestimated.

A wedding list may be naff, but so is the garish, hand-painted fruit bowl (don't do it, crafty types) that has to come out every time a certain aunt visits. And what am I supposed to do with the nine - I kid you not - vases we were given, of which not one is the right size for a bunch of tulips?

I am not speaking as someone who refused a wedding list. Oh no. These gifts are from the Tanyas of the world, the people who decided to buy "off list". I can only imagine the car boot sale that would have followed had all 300 guests (yes, I know, but we're Jewish and that's what we do) been given free rein.

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About this article

Anne Shooter defends wedding gift lists | Shortcuts

This article appeared on p3 of the G2 section of the Guardian
on Sunday 14 June 2009.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 19.01 EDT on Sunday 14 June 2009.
It was last modified at 07.36 EST on Tuesday 27 January 2015.
It was first published at 19.09 EDT on Sunday 14 June 2009.